The Why
by chrissie0707
Summary: Oneshot. Post Still Life. Nick contemplates the need to know why. Rating for language.


Really was not planning on this becoming a post-ep to anything, but as my own little train of thought started to wander, this became a very belated post-ep to "Still Life". Started after I watched a rerun of "Friends and Lovers" on SpikeTV last week, and a little bit of dialogue stuck with me as being both annoying and inspiring, and the aforementioned train of thought ran wild. Sorry there's no whumpin', Kim, but I think my timing's pretty good, yeah?

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**The Why

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**

It had definitely been one of _those _days.

The kind that made you just want to run home (discreetly, of course, no need to draw attention to yourself), deadbolt the front door, draw the curtains closed, shut out the chaotic white noise of the outside world and have a moment to _think_.

Of course, the downside of thinking was that, well, you thought. Things that you wanted to do nothing more with than to lock out of your mind forever always seemed to find their way in, seeping in through the growing cracks in the walls of repression and denial that you worked so hard to put up.

Things that you hadn't thought about in _years_ popped up. Things that you had no reason to think about, because you thought you were over them. Things that you wouldn't have normally thought had any connection at all…turned out that they did, in that overworked brain of yours. And your train of thought wandered and weaved and it seemed damn impossible to put the brakes on.

Nick shut the front door, not hesitating for a fraction of a second before flipping the deadbolt, and walked straight to the refrigerator, tossing his keys in the general direction of the table. They landed with a heavy clink on the wooden tabletop. He pulled out a beer and stood there, draining it in the darkness of the kitchen broken only by the too-bright illumination coming from the inside of the open fridge.

He set the empty bottle down on the counter and laughed at himself, breaking the silence of the empty house. Rubbing a hand over his eyes, he shook his head and moved into the living room, sticking out a foot behind him to kick the refrigerator door shut.

No, he wasn't going to do this. He wasn't a 'drowning my sorrows' kind of guy, and he wasn't about to start now. Not with everything that he had put up with, and made it through. _This _wasn't going to slow him down. It definitely wasn't enough to cause that. Especially when he wasn't even sure what to make of it.

But he couldn't fight the feeling that that day was the first domino in a long line, and it had just been tipped over.

As Nick lowered himself to the couch, flipping on the lamp on the side table to keep the setting from getting _too _depressing, that uncontrollable and unstoppable train of thought pulled out of the station. This specific train had started with a simple case.

Well, 'simple' meaning that it had started as just a case. Just another shift. A panicked mother who had lost track of her child at the park. It happened, and they would find the kid. They always did.

"Simple" disappeared pretty early in the day, because pretty early in the day, it became about more than the case.

It became about the woman that was watching him from the edge of parking lot. The one that had turned and ran when he looked up and saw her.

The one that was supposed to be in jail.

It was okay, though, because Nick wasn't above believing that it was just a trick of a combination of the light and his mind. Maybe the angle of the sunlight against the line of vehicles in that row in the parking lot…and plus, with the shadows from the trees…it could look like a person right? And his brain slapped a face onto the illusion.

Or maybe not.

For a lot of people, working was a nice way to keep your mind off of whatever it was that it really wanted to think about. You didn't have that luxury when what you were trying to not think about showed up at your work. It just figured, too. The first time in awhile that he had a visitor in the lab. Nick would have given anything to see his worried mother standing there in the lobby, in town on business and just randomly popping in to check in on him. _That_ would have been better. If it had been his mom, then he could have just put on the happy coping face and shut her away in the guest room for the night and that would be that.

He wouldn't have had to worry about trying to shut her out of his mind. Because a concerned parent, while annoying, would certainly not have been something that he would be sitting in his living room thinking about. Kelly Gordon coming by to see him, well, that was a different story.

And all the things in the world that he could be obsessing about at that moment, and his mind kept bringing him back to a Grissom-ism.

He could have had flashbacks. The. Damn. Box. Lord knows, he had them. This was a perfect opportunity for something like that. It was a 24/7 job of work keeping himself from thinking back to that, and Kelly Gordon's visit was nothing but a not-so-friendly reminder. So, the best played money would have been placed on the 'Nick's not going to get any sleep today' card. Nightmares. They were a bitch.

But Nick wasn't thinking about that. Not at all. He was thinking about the Holy Trinity, or Grissom's version of it, and how there had always been something missing.

Who.

Where.

What.

The three most important questions to any CSI that wanted to move up in the world.

Suspect.

Location.

Weapon.

It was what you needed, all you needed, to solve a case. Grissom drilled it into their heads, along with so many other things that would later be either supported or discredited, but never disproved, because it was _Grissom_. Would he tell you something that wasn't true? No one factor was more important than the others; they worked together - the missing pieces of one hard-ass puzzle.

Finding these three things was like playing a game of Clue. Two and a half agonizingly long hours (or days, in these cases) to come to the conclusion that you should have known all along. Colonel Mustard. Library. Wrench. It was an obvious choice, but Nick couldn't recall a single time that it had in fact been those three cards in the envelope. Whatever the answer turned out to be, once you had those three things, you won the game, right? So that was that.

Except that that wasn't always _that_. There was more. No one ever wondered _why_ the old Colonel had decided that it was time for that anthropologist to meet his untimely end on the business end of a wrench. It very well could have been an act of self-defense, not blind rage, and there was no reason for anyone to say that it wasn't important, or that it didn't matter, or more specifically "Who the hell gives a fuck, man?" as Ray Corbin had so eloquently pointed out back sophomore year of high school, when the whole lot of them had gotten _drunk _drunk in Ray's basement, and thought it would be funny to play the game when they found it in a closet.

Funny? Eh. More like spectacularly uncoordinated, and Nick was pretty sure that someone, most likely Dean Harris, the big lugoon, had swallowed the candlestick at some point during the night. Or maybe it was the rope...whatever it was, they were missing more than one piece in the morning.

The point of the story being, when Nick had finally grabbed the envelope from the center of the game board (and managed not to fall over while doing so) and slurred victoriously that ole Mrs. Peacock had gotten cranky in the Observatory and taken a swing with a lead pipe...something had made him vocalize his inquiry as to _why._

What had Mr. Boddy done to deserve that clonk on the head?

It was stupendously stupid, and he was stupendously drunk (having in fact been his first – and last for a good long while, Mrs. Corbin had been _pissed_ about the puke in her rose bushes – encounter with alcohol) but it stuck with him. It was maybe a miracle that he even remembered what had happened that night, but he did, and it stuck. _Why?_

Maybe Ray was right. _"Who the hell gives a fuck, man?" _It was certainly a whole hell of a lot easier to go to sleep at night that way. Not caring.

But maybe he wasn't.

Because after so many years, Nick finally appreciated the value of knowing _why_. Oh, sure, he had always been inquisitive, and part of the Trinity or not, he wanted to know. Something inside of him always wanted to know, or there wasn't any real closure on the case.

He used to not care so much about the why. Well, that wasn't exactly true, now was it? No, he had always cared – he had cared as an inebriated sixteen-year-old, so what made now any different – but he had put it in the back of his mind, because he was too busy caring about what Grissom thought. Thank God for Catherine, and a short conversation that had taken place in an interrogation room five years ago.

_"No, no, this isn't over."_

_"For all forensic purposes, it is over. They're going to eat bread and bang a metal cup against some bars. That's it. It's over for us." _Cold and detached? Or maybe he was just new. Been in the game for a good six years...but yep. Still new. It was like he had a brand new brain and everything. Wasn't used to using it.

_"We still don't know why."_

_"It's not our job to know why." _Had he really been THAT ignorant? Or maybe just THAT far down on his knees in front of his self-erected shrine to Gil Grissom? _"It's our job to know how. You heard Grissom. The more 'why' the less 'how', the less 'how' the more 'why'."_ Yup. It was that last one. Quoting Grissom like...well, like he carried around a book of Grissom quotes. Hell, no.

_"Hey, Nick."_

_"Yeah?"_

_"Grissom's not always right. Do yourself a favor, and think for yourself. I mean that as a friend, okay?"_

It was quite possibly the best thing that anyone could have said to him. And it was a damn embarrassing moment, too. Nick had taken the job in Vegas because he had been so impressed with Grissom, and until that moment, he hadn't really thought about what it all looked like to outside observers. He wasn't even thinking - he was just doing what he was told, and spouting off little bits of Grissom wisdom.

After Catherine had been gracious enough to lay it all out there for him, he spend a little less time worrying about impressing Grissom, and a little more time doing what he felt needed done, and finding the answers that he felt were needed. And now, he was really glad that he took that time, because he knew how it felt.

Because now, he didn't just want to know why, he _needed_ to know why.

Maybe it made the day easier for some people, not asking why. When you didn't know why, you went home, opened up a beer, and watched the tape of last night's big game.

When you did know why, you went home, opened up a beer, and sat in your dimly lit living room, soaking in the silence - which wasn't really silent at all, but unbearably loud with the static of thought inside your head.

Because, was it ever really satisfying, knowing why?

Why?

Because he told everyone that his brother wet the bed.

Because she loved someone else.

Because they knew that he had stolen the money.

Because the kid wasn't good enough for his daughter.

Because he just couldn't help it.

And of course, Nick's personal favorite - because he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was just _that_ shit outta luck.

Wasn't that the story of his life, after all? Wasn't he a walking, breathing, somehow still living example of wrong place, wrong time? It was what his tombstone was going to say: He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It wasn't ever satisfying, but they needed to know. And Nick got that. Maybe to really appreciate the value of knowing why, you had to appreciate being the victim. There couldn't be anyone else in the world that cared more about why something happened than to who it happened to.

It wasn't something he was happy about, but Nick understood how the victims felt. And he understood that need of those surviving to know _why._ No longer just the last missing piece of that puzzle that he was trying to put together, why was a question that spent a lot of time thrashing around in his brain.

Because the only answer that he had, that wrong place, wrong time crap, just wasn't enough.

'Bad luck' wasn't enough.

And for whatever reason, all Kelly's visit that day had done was remind him that he didn't have a fucking clue as to _why._

The house phone started to ring, and Nick glanced over. The caller ID said that it was Warrick, and Nick spent two rings contemplating not answering. No, he decided, reaching for the cordless receiver, he wasn't going to be that guy.

"Hey, man," he answered on the fourth ring, right before the machine would have taken it.

"Hey," Warrick responded. He sounded surprised that Nick answered, which only made Nick annoyed at himself. His best friend expected him to be that guy. "You shot outta the lab pretty quick this morning. Just wanted to check in and see what's up."

What's up? There were so many ways for Nick to handle the question. But he just didn't have it in him.

"Yeah," he said. "Kinda wanted to just be home."

"Something happen?"

Beat. "Yeah," Nick said slowly. "Yeah, something did."

Warrick waited, and Nick got the feeling that his friend would sit there on the other end of that line til Doomsday, if that's what it took to get Nick to tell him what was going on. And something about the thought made him _want_ to tell Warrick.

"Kelly Gordon stopped by the lab today. To see me."

Warrick let out a whistle. "Why?" he asked, somewhat hesitantly. Yes, yes, what a miraculous event it was, Nick actually _talking _about something that was going on with him.

_Why? _Why, why, why, why, WHY.

Nick sighed. "Don't I wish I knew, man." He leaned back against the cushioning of the couch, preparing for the long conversation that was going to follow. "Don't I wish I knew."

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End file.
